A 73-car train operated by Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railway Inc. and reportedly heading to Irving Oil’s 300,000-barrel-a-day Saint John’s refinery, rolled free and traveled 12 kilometers under its own steam before coming off the rails in the early hours of Saturday. Five people are confirmed dead; some 40 are missing. Lac Megantic is the sort of small town where everyone will know someone touched by this tragedy.

In Lac Megantic there is anguish and anger. Town Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche told the Globe & Mail that her town is one of many with concerns about cargo-train shipments, and that she recently asked the company to look after the tracks carefully.

There is no safe way of transporting crude oil, or oil products, the Financial Times says. Trains derail, pipes leak. But the events in Lac Megantic will provide supporters of projects like the Keystone XL pipeline with fuel for their arguments.

President Barack Obama recently said that approval for Keystone, which aims to ship Canadian crude all the way to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, would be given only if the pipeline “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”

Canadian oil is more profitable now than it was 12 months ago, as rail transport has taken off. But the Lac Megantic disaster, coupled with the Keystone uncertainty, means doubts about the return on Canadian oil investment will remain.

Shell says that the vast majority of environmental damage in the Niger Delta results from spills caused by thieves who breach pipelines in order to steal oil.

However, human-rights groups and nongovernmental organizations operating in the region have accused Shell of being too quick to blame oil theft for spills that could have been caused by other factors, such as operational error or aging infrastructure, as the Journal’s Sarah Kent and Benoît Faucon report.

Crude-oil futures slipped lower Monday in London morning trade as some profits were taken after last week’s pronounced gains, but the short-term price picture remains bullish as fundamental, economic and geopolitical issues combine to provide support. You can read the Journal’s market report here.